Subprime Obama...(from the Nation)

[candice]

Illinois progressive mentioned that Obama's advisers came out the Milton Friedman school of economics (read conservative). I heard Hillary answer questions in which she had the heart to recognize that people were being swindled by the mortgage industry. What follows is one of the reasons George Will, the archetypal conservative, could live with Obama (although he'll vote for McCain):

A few excerpts from a comment in the Nation ("Subprime Obama")

http://www.thenation.com/doc/20080211/fraser



"There's been less emphasis from the Obama campaign on the really dysfunctional role of the financial industry in the subprime mess," says Josh Bivens of the Economic Policy Institute. "Edwards and Clinton talk much more about regulation of the financial industry going forward, and to the extent that blame is placed, they tend to place it on the lenders for steering people into loans they couldn't afford."

Obama's disappointing foreclosure plan stems from the centrist politics of his three chief economic advisers and his campaign's ties to Wall Street institutions opposed to increased financial regulation. David Cutler and Jeffrey Liebman are both Harvard economists who served in the Clinton Administration, and they work on market-oriented solutions to social welfare issues. Cutler advocates improving healthcare through financial incentives; Liebman, the partial privatization of Social Security.

Austan Goolsbee, an economist at the University of Chicago who calls himself a "centrist market economist," has been most directly involved with crafting Obama's subprime agenda. In a column last March in the New York Times, Goolsbee disputed whether "subprime lending was the leading cause of foreclosure problems," touted its benefits for credit-poor minority borrowers and warned that "regulators should be mindful of the potential downside in tightening too much." In October, no less a conservative luminary than George Will devoted a whole column in the Washington Post to saluting Goolsbee's "nuanced understanding" of traditional Democratic issues like globalization and income inequality and concluded that he "seems to be the sort of fellow--amiable, empirical, and reasonable--you would want at the elbow of a Democratic president, if such there must be."

[OzarkDem]

1. That will destroy his chances in Ohio

a state that has been hit hard by the submprime lending mess, thanks to Taft and the GOP idiots in the GA.

[Barack_America]

2. So that Bivens guy doesn't know what the hell he's talking about...

Obama has spoken about penalizing predatory lenders in every recent debate. So I don't quite understand this guy's claim that Obama hasn't focused on regulation of these lenders.

[sandnsea]

3. Obama called for mortgage regulation

2 years ago. He addresses the actual problems and doesn't throw the kitchen sink up to appease every pundit.

http://obama.senate.gov/news/060215-obama_durbin_pr/

[candice]

4. Did he shepherd this bill through the Senate?

[sandnsea]

5. He is still working on it

The point was that his actions prove your article is wrong. I think people misunderstand his goals because he knows how to frame his progressive proposals in words that the middle can relate to. He doesn't need liberal advisers to do that, he needs conservative advisers so he doesn't trip on their roadblocks.

[AX10]

6. The "Saintly" Obama!

:eyes: